My Online Body

Having mapped out my usage of online services in a previous post, I came to make a rather unexpected realization. I have an online body, with functions similar to my 'real' body, composed of online applications that exist on the Internet. As my physical body has senses for input, has storage capabilities and also the ability to cause a change in its surroundings through voice and actions, a similar pattern exists for me as a citizen of the online world.

The role of my eyes, ears and other senses is played by a set of programs that allow me to find content from around the web. Google mail allows me to receive a message from someone who wants to speak to me. Google reader allows me to follow the websites I subscribe to. Google's search allows me to find websites that have material I need. And of course the wider web contains the actual content. So these are my online senses.

Google documents plays the role of my online memory. Very often I will see something that will cause an idea I want to jot down somewhere. What better place to do that than online, so I can have access to my notes wherever I go.

Once some ideas get mature, it is time for me to make them articles that I can post to the web. So I write an article that I post to Blogger. In this sense, Blogger is my mouth. Also FriendFeed plays a similar role, one of allowing me to express myself, albeit mostly through the selection I express myself and the people who 'hear' me (find their way to my post), can actually consume my thoughts and the act of communication is complete. If we forget about bodies, online or offline, communication is the transference of thoughts from one mind to another. This is accomplished differently in each world but the end result is similar, if not the same.

You may say that even though I have these online senses, they still require my hands to type, my ears to hear the sound and my eyes to read the screen. You would be correct, but this is merely a technical issue. There is no reason to believe this will not be unnecessary in the future. Perhaps all we will need to partake in the online community will be a functioning brain. I say this thinking of a friend of mine who, having minimal control of his fingers and eyes, is able to lead a mostly normal life online and actually use it to enhance his real-world life. This leads me to the thought that if we could transfer our mind into a web-connected computer, I would still be able to do all these things. My online body is autonomous and requires no input from the real world. If nobody ever told me anything again in the real world, I would still be able to be informed. By adding Instant messaging and social networking to the mix, I could even maintain human connections without ever leaving my habitat. In fact, adding services such as adsense, paypal and online banks to the picture, someone could ostensibly also maintain a successful professional life throughout the same setup.

Now, I can see a lot of humanists getting extremely angry at my overreaching simplifications. I should probably clarify that I don't mean to say that a mind experiencing the world purely through on-line means would be able to live a fully satisfying life. The emotional aspects and our need for real-world contact, human touch etc. is not to be underestimated. It is just interesting how far this body has evolved in such a short period of time. Most of these tools did not exist 10 or 15 years ago, so who knows where we'll be in another 20 or 30 years.

Having defined our online and offline bodies, it is interesting to explore how they are interconnected. Nobody can say that 'what happens online, stays online'. The two realities definitely influence one another in ways we can perhaps think about and draw interesting conclusions, maybe in a future article.